Well, thank you all for your
prompt replies.
Firstly Piotr, why IEists?
Mainly for your second reason I assure you. But mostly because IEists would have
the data available to refute or dispute the derivations Bernal puts
forward.
Let me assure you, especially
Guillaume, I am not a blind devotee of Bernal (although I really don't care
whether he was a communist or not), and I find some of his derivations highly
suspect purely on the logic of the arguments he puts forward. I don't have the
resources to really investigate for myself - although I may soon be coming back
to UK and may be able to do more in this area (time permitting).
Nevertheless, my principal
antagonists on this list have been arguing from the standard viewpoint - little
or no contact with Egypt, and what contact there was was due to Greek
initiative, Cretan/Mycenean thalassocracy, culture flow from north to
south, Mediterranean/Asianic substratum etc.
Nevertheless, so far we have a
rejection rate of approx. 20% of the words proposed (all culled from Bernal - I
don't dare at this stage propose any of my own speculations). I bow to your
superior knowledge on these matters, although I disagree with Guillaume's
translation of qdS - it may have carried this meaning of "royal glory" in 1st
millennium Hebrew, but there is no hint of this that I can see in the (not very
extensive) Phoenician word list I have, and certainly not in any of the forms of
this productive root in Arabic.
Of course, the primary problem
in a rigorous correlation of Greek to Egyptian, is that of the actual
pronunciation of Egyptian. Here the hieroglyphs conceal more then they
reveal, particularly in New Kingdom Egyptian, which by all accounts was
radically different from the Classical (Middle Egyptian) hieroglyphic, but
which would have been the form of the language which had most impact on Greek.
As Piotr states, the phonetics of Egyptians are by no means settled, and
all three languages involved here - Egyptian, West Semitic and Greek - underwent
extensive change during the period in question. Greek renditions of Egyptian
names also show a bewildering variety of phonetic correspondences.
Picking up on Guillaume's "sus"
from Aryan as'va, is it possible that the initial 'h' of hippos is due to
"contamination" between the inherited ekwos and the Semitic, borrowed from
Indo-Aryan, but all of which seem to show an initial 's', Heb. su:s, Ak. si:su:,
Ug. ssw (with acute accents on the esses)? If so, this may have some consequence
on the nature, extent and ethnic composition of the Hyksos.
So, thank you all once again for
your prompt responses. Whatever one's views of Bernal et al., there seems to me
to be a prima facie case worth investigating, which could shed light on many of
the problems surrounding the Greek lexicon, Egyptian pronunciation, the history
of the BA Aegean, and the religions and mythologies of the region.
Cheers
Dennis